WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court will this March hear arguments centered on the government’s role in communicating — and sometimes censoring — pertinent public health information in the midst of a pandemic.
At the heart of the lawsuit is the question of whether the federal government’s lawsuits on social media and the pursuit of giants like Google, Facebook, Twitter and YouTube to moderate misinformation about Covid-19 violated users’ First Amendment rights.
advertisement
While the lawsuit was originally filed through then-Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt and known as Missouri v. Biden was later joined by a number of plaintiffs arguing that the Biden administration got rid of its Covid-19 content. Among them are Jay Bhattacharya and Martin Kulldorff, co-authors of a paper, the Great Barrington Declaration, which promotes the theory that other people could simply reach herd immunity without vaccines.
Jim Hoft, owner of conservative media outlet The Gateway Pundit, also joined the lawsuit. Google said in 2021 that it had demonetized it and many of its articles. ” We have strict policies for publishers that prohibit content that promotes anti-vaccine theories, Covid-19 misinformation, and false claims about the 2020 U. S. presidential election,” a spokesperson said at the time.
The case is now Murthy v. Missouri.
advertising
The U. S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the same court that heard the mifepristone case that will go to the Supreme Court later in March, ruled that several government agencies, including the Department of Health and Human Services, the State Department and cybersecurity officials, have the right to influence social media companies’ content moderation policies.
In October 2023, the Supreme Court stayed the order until it ruled on the case.
Conservative Justices Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas and Neil Gorsuch disagreed with the ruling.
“At this point in our country’s history, I fear that what the Court has done will be perceived by some as a green kindness to the government to use heavy-handed tactics to distort the presentation of reviews in the mainstream media. information,” Alito wrote.
U. S. Attorney General Elizabeth Prelogar has argued before the court that appointments between government agencies and social media sites are collaborative and that while government officials “frequently suggest” false information, they do not force corporations to do so.
“There is a difference between persuasion and coercion,” Prelogar wrote.
Coronavirus
legal
politician
Supreme court
White House
Reporting from the frontiers of health and medicine
Enterprise
Account
More
Unlimited to must-have journalism in biotechnology, medicine, and life sciences.
Your go-to place for the latest biopharma and life sciences news and information
Unlimited access to essential biotech, medicine, and life sciences journalism
Your go-to place for the latest biopharma and life sciences news and information